Blue Christmas
by Wickedgal08
Summary: Season 6 canon compliant-ish. Damon and Elena face their first Christmas without each other, and attempt to make the best of a bad situation, even whilst being worlds and decades apart.


**Blue Christmas**

...

Summary: Season 6 canon-compliant. Facing the first prospective Christmas without each other, Damon and Elena do what they do best, even in the wake of utter loneliness, and make the best of a bad situation by celebrating Christmas. Tweaks canon a little bit, as in this universe Elena never gets compelled to forget Damon, and Kai doesn't make an appearance yet Liz is still diagnosed with a terminal illness. It's my way of easing my way back into writing fanfiction again as I've hit a major writer's block, and also had work consuming my time.

...

**_Elena_**

_It's A Wonderful Life _was playing on the television. She'd picked up the audio clues well before the visual, and as such had returned to flickering aimlessly through channels, hoping against hope to find something that wasn't tragically depressing, or, on the other end of the scale, nauseatingly heart-warming. Elena just wanted that perfect middle ground, which involved watching something that steered well clear of any tragic circumstances that would circle her right back into thinking about Damon, and which would preferably end on a reasonably ambivalent note so that she didn't end up feeling like life had robbed her of something inexplicably joyful (even though she already did).

No happy ending, in other words.

Life wasn't like that. It didn't dole out happy endings – you had to work for them, and even then they weren't always a guarantee. You could be a good person, yet still get struck down by cancer. You could be a mortal saint, always putting everyone else before yourself, and yet still end up dead in a car accident. You could be a morally skewed vampire, with an eternity to play with, and a love under your belt which could tide you over until the end of the world itself, and yet, despite the promise of forever, you could still wind up utterly alone, celebrating Christmas in your dorm room, pretending you were okay when you were still falling apart.

In other words, no matter what you did, or which person you decided to be, you were never guaranteed a happy future or even a future at all.

Elena turned off the television after a while. It was pointless watching re-runs of things she'd already watched before, especially when she knew the ending already. She was already facing her first Christmas alone, and that was a depressing enough thought, so why torture herself with carrying on little traditions, like watching Christmas films, when there was no one around to enjoy them with?

Caroline and her mom were spending Christmas abroad, given the severity of the illness which spread throughout Liz Forbes' body. Seeing how nobody could give an end date to Liz's life, Caroline, in true Caroline Forbes style, had put on a brave burst of optimism and demanded they spend the holiday elsewhere, to take their mind off of all the tragedy their little town had hosted over the years. Stefan was AWOL, and nobody had heard a word off of him since his last short message.

_Still looking for leads. Will message you when I have more information. _

That had been two months ago, and though Caroline had tried to maintain contact with him, he'd never replied to any of her messages, and nobody had been able to track him down, so he'd become a lost cause. A lost cause that was – hopefully – still alive, but lost all the same.

Then you had Jeremy, who was spending Christmas in Mystic Falls with Matt and Tyler – which was an exclusive no-magic zone, which meant she couldn't even set one foot across the border without being zipped back to the night when she'd lost her mortal life. She was heartbroken that he hadn't wanted to spend it with her, but he was "checked out" at the moment, and he'd curtly told her that being around Matt and Tyler was where he needed to be right now. They were helping him come to terms with Bonnie's loss, something she very well couldn't do while she was still coming to terms with it herself, juggling getting over Damon at the same time. She couldn't very well argue with his plans now, could she? Particularly when he seemed to be at least attempting to pursue a healthier approach at grieving than the way she had used herself.

For a while, she'd used witchy herbs purchased from Luke in order to hallucinate Damon being there, but he'd soon cut her off when it had become clear she'd become overly dependent on her daily fix of seeing Damon, and when he had done, she'd had to mourn him all over again, and there had been nothing harder than going through that loss twice. She'd hissed and yelled and raged and sobbed at Luke's door until eventually he'd had to use his magic to send her screaming away with a raging headache that could've killed her had she been human, and Liv was soon quick to defend her brother, warning Elena if she even dared approach her brother again, they would be quick to take her out, and in the end she'd had to weigh her own life against having a fleeting moment with a not-so-real Damon, and eventually the sensible part of her brain had decided to reawaken, and had cautioned her from doing anything irrational ever again.

Alaric had put a tempting offer out on the table in terms of spending Christmas with him, but as he was spending it with Jo, she'd declined the invitation, deciding _third wheel_ was a role she didn't need to be right now. Besides, he needed to grasp happiness with both hands, given how tragic his history with girlfriends seemed to be, and she wasn't going to get in the way of him enjoying Jo's company, especially since she was in a moping mood.

Christmas morning had been uneventful. She'd spoken to Jeremy and Matt to wish them a happy Christmas, and Caroline had messaged her, making sure she was okay. Alaric had phoned as well, expressing concern at the fact she'd holed herself up in her room, with only a portable television for company, and she'd batted away his concerns by fishing for details about his and Jo's relationship. That had kept him occupied for a good five minutes as he'd admitted things were going well, which had made her smile, even though her heart barely concealed the pang of jealousy she'd felt for the fact someone in her life seemed to have a thriving romantic relationship.

Christmas dinner had involved a three course meal – and by three course meal, she meant three blood bags (strategically spread out over the course of the day, so she didn't develop ripper-like urges in the future). Now the day was drawing to a close, and the sun had long since set, and she was holed up in the dorm room herself, Bonnie and Caroline were all supposed to be in right now, only one was gone, and the other abroad, and she couldn't stop herself feeling this little black hole of misery slowly consume her.

"Stop it," she told herself severely. "Pull yourself together, Elena."

She tried to stop herself thinking about Damon, about their last memory together, about the way his shirt hugged her body whenever she wore it – which wasn't often now, as the action just served her more pain. She tried so hard to erase him from every conscious thought, from every deep breathed sigh, from every blink of her eyes, but he was there all the same. Even in death, he had an omnipresence that she just couldn't shake.

She'd weaned herself off of the drugs for some time, but the cravings still flared up. Tonight they were even stronger. Christmas for the lonely was the equivalent of eating a three course meal in front of a starving man: you were offered but a glimpse, a promise, of what you could've had, and yet it was cruelly eradicated before your eyes, leaving you hollow and empty.

Elena swallowed loudly and tried to pull herself together. In the spirit of Christmas, she'd decorated the dorm room, but it looked haunted rather than life affirming. Caroline would've given it so much more effort, but she wasn't here, and so Elena had had to go with her C+ style decorating skills. It brought to memory a rather funny incident, when she and Jeremy had attempted to decorate the living room before their parents woke up, to disastrous results. Their mom had always done the decorating, and she'd made it look classy, elegant, as if the room had skipped straight from the pages of one of those posh magazines revolving around interior design. For the first time though, she and Jeremy had taken it upon their own hands to do the decorating for her. This had involved sneaking trips to the attic to fetch down the decorations and then waiting for their parents to go to bed before they'd made the trip downstairs in order to decorate the living room. At the time, they'd believed they'd done an amazing job, until they'd woken up and gone downstairs, only to find the decorations were skewed, and the tree they'd put up – a fake one, naturally – had been assembled wrong, and looked far shorter than they remembered it being, and nothing matched, and it just looked as if someone had taken all the colours of Christmas, put them in a blender, and thrown the concoction at the wall in the hopes it would make something beautiful.

Their mom, who'd been up for hours, had then made her appearance, cocking an eyebrow in their direction, drawling lazily, "You know there's a reason why I undertake this task every year don't you? It's because when you two try your hands at DIY decorating, chaos usually ensues."

She and Jeremy had exchanged sheepish looks and simultaneously chorused, "We just wanted to help," to which their mother had responded, "In future, you two are demoted to decorating the tree only." She'd smiled and then added, "It's not like I don't appreciate the effort. You just get a little overenthusiastic."

Clearly, her mother wouldn't have said the same thing about the way Elena had decorated the door room. The effort she'd put in had been half hearted at best, and it showed. Lights were strung around the bed posts, and there were a few vaguely Christmassy themed ornaments littering the place. Tinsel decorated the photo frames, and the window frames, but it looked as if she'd just decorated for the sake of decorating – which, in all fairness, she had. Caroline Forbes would've given it a big fat F that was for sure.

Everybody else, apart from a few stragglers, had gone home for Christmas, understandably, which meant Whitmore College was almost deserted. Even with her vampire hearing, all Elena could pick out was the sound of the wind rustling through the trees. It was the perfect audio accompaniment to an otherwise lonely Christmas.

But a small part of her wanted to enjoy it all the same.

With new spirits, Elena rose to her feet and retrieved two candles from the box of decorations Caroline had left her over the summer. Maybe they were a potential fire hazard, but for the purpose they were about to serve, she was sure she could bend the rules of health and safety for a blink of a moment. She lit the candles – one for Bonnie, one for Damon – and she smiled at how bright the flames seemed to be (or maybe she was just not giving the darkness enough credit).

Maybe she was just imagining it. Maybe it was just some faint remnants of the witchy drugs Luke had given her stirring in her system. Maybe it was just a cold delusion her mind had cooked up all on its own just because that was how lonely she felt. Maybe it was all of the above.

All the same, it didn't stop Elena from imagining she saw in the glow of the candlelight Bonnie and Damon, sitting around a table, looking back at her. The image was like chancing a passing glimpse at the sun; one fleeting glimpse of pure gold and then darkness, forcing her eyes – and her heart - to adjust to reality. She absorbed Damon's face, the way his bright blue eyes contrasted against the dim canvas that was his background. She memorised the way his lips curled into a smile so different from his average smirk because it looked so _real _and bursting with genuine emotion. She took in the unkempt manner of his hair, which he never did anything with because he hated the idea of ruining his quote unquote perfect hairdo with manufactured slime that Stefan - and again this was a direct quote - seemed to have an ongoing supply of. Then she turned towards Bonnie, wanting to almost throw up because she didn't know how much it would hurt to be reminded of her best friend's tradition of never being without her friends on Christmas. They'd made a pact, the three of them, to always find a way to spend time together, even if it was only five minutes, on the day itself, so that they could always remind each other how lucky they were to have each other.

She bit her lip, fighting off a wave of tears, and then gathered herself together.

"Merry Christmas," she spoke softly.

She'd had this tradition, ever since her grandmother had died a week before Christmas all those years ago, of lighting a candle for those who couldn't be there to celebrate the holiday with her. It occurred to her now that the tradition wasn't really a tradition anymore; given how many people she'd lost, it had now become a habit. She'd lit candles for Vickie Donovan, Mayor Lockwood, her parents, Carol Lockwood, Alaric, John Gilbert, hell, even Isobel. She'd lit candles, and cried quietly, and remembered the people she'd loved and lost, and the only difference between those other occasions and this was that she'd simply run out of tears to cry.

So she settled for watching the flames flicker and burn until they'd been reduced to little specks of orange, barely visible against the black canvas that seemed to represent her life right now. Then, steeling herself, Elena extinguished the flames for another year, and realised the symbolism of doing that act herself. She was taking control of the mourning process, letting it hurt her before she stopped it consuming too much. By extinguishing the candles, she was extinguishing any residual feelings of grief – although it never truly faded – and beginning the moving on process.

Maybe that was the Christmas miracle she needed this year.

Having said that, she wouldn't forsake the opportunity to see Bonnie and Damon again, just for a second, just to memorise everything about them before letting them pass into peace, or whatever resembled it over there.

That was the worst part, the not knowing.

Well, wherever they were, she hoped they were happy there. The thought of any other alternative burned her more than the pain of losing them.

She briefly glanced at her phone - no new messages there - and then decided to turn in early, that way she could bid goodbye to yet another Christmas and begin preparations to start anew in the new year. She was coping - slowly but surely - and it was getting easier and easier to claw through each day, even though she still came out of each day with a burning hole in her heart, but all the same, like a drug addict in a liquor store, the temptation to relapse was just too strong. Sometimes all she wanted to do was sit and cry and feel miserable just because it was easier than building up this pretence that she was fine.

She hadn't been fine since the day her parents had died, and even though he was alive and well - for the most part - she'd never quite recovered from the loss of Jeremy, which had shattered some naive part of her which had believed life couldn't quite snatch all of her family from her. His temporary death had broken something inside her, and this was why it had lead to the conclusion that she'd never be fine again. An infinite amount of fake smiles and affirmations of her state of being might convince people otherwise, but she knew deep down she'd undergone a severe change that she would never recover from.

Of one thing she was very sure though.

She was a survivor.

Two more tragedies had brought her to her knees, but she wasn't slain just yet. She knew now she would never be able to keep everyone safe from death, not forever; Matt and Jeremy, and now Tyler, would succumb to old age and then perish. Having an eternity under your belt also meant you were likely to have enemies cross your path every now and again, and what were the chances that she could keep Caroline and Alaric safe from unseen dangers? Nothing was certain anymore. She would lose somebody else, and that wasn't just her being pessimistic. Realism would be the only thing to keep her sane now; that, and alcohol of course.

Tucking herself between the sheets of her bed, Elena wished harder than ever for a happy ending. Not for herself of course, as you needed to really die in order to have a conclusive ending, but for all her friends. She wanted Matt to find somebody to love and settle down with. She wanted Tyler to gain control of his new status as a human on the cusp of being a werewolf, perhaps find love, but just generally be happy. She wanted Stefan to come home - as near to home as he possibly could anyway - and just be around his friends, or at the very least call to say he was moving on, and she wanted him to find happiness and control and everything he'd ever lacked before in the past. She wanted Caroline and Liz to always have each other, and for Liz to grow old and die naturally as opposed to a terrible illness she had no control over. She wanted Jeremy to move on from Bonnie, to channel his anger and sadness into his art, and she wanted him to find his place in his world and be as happy as he could, even with the harsh hand life had dealt him.

As for herself?

Elena found all she wanted was the strength to get through each day. Eternity, after all, was a long stretch of road she had to conquer mile by mile, and it had no specific destination, which meant she could control her route. Maybe it was philosophical of her to think this way, but it was a comforting thought all the same.

Life could throw every sort of obstacle at you, but there was always a way of steering around them until you reached safer places.

As her mother had once said, _the only good part of losing one's way is that it makes the getting home part of the journey that much sweeter. _

But her home had gone. Mystic Falls was a no-supernatural zone, and the only person she'd felt represented home for her was gone as well. So where did that leave her? Did she rebuild a new home in the ashes of the old, or was she better off travelling for a bit, after college of course, in search for adventure?

The latter sounded more rewarding, in the sense it would provide her both with a distraction and it would give her chance to see the world. She'd been stuck in and around Mystic Falls all her life, and all she'd known there was misery and tragedy, with a sprinkling of passion, love and danger. The world would offer her much more, and she was looking forward to the day she graduated college so she could spread her wings.

She would always love Damon, and she sincerely doubted love was on the cards for her ever again, but she'd finally found her ticket to moving on and she was determined to take it with both hands.

And with that thought, she slipped off into sleep with a hopeful smile crossing her features.

_I love you, Damon, _was her final sleepy thought. _But this is me letting you go. I have to find a way to be happy without you. It'll be the hardest thing I've ever had to do, but I'm going to give it a go. _

And in her sleep, unbeknownst to Elena, a soft _bye _fluttered past her lips.

**_Damon_**

"You're being absolutely moronic if you think you can fit that there."

"It'll fit, Damon. It has to. I measured it."

There was a heavy sigh. "Do you need my help putting it in, or are you going to continue your pitiful attempts at doing it yourself? I'm all for independent women, but are you sure you don't need a big, bad _vampire_ to assist you here? I mean I am _super_ strong and everything..."

"If you continue talking in that condescending way, Damon, I will use whatever magic I have to shove this tree up your ass, and then we'll see who needs _assistance_."

Damon held up his hands in mock defence.

"Ding dong, who upset the wicked witch this morning?"

Bonnie exhaled sharply, glaring heatedly in the vampire's direction before pushing back a strand of her dark hair as she allowed the tree she'd carefully picked out to rest on its side whilst she planned another course of action.

"It's Christmas, Damon. Not technically here, as we are living the same day over and over, but back home it is. Do you know that means for me?" She began to tug impatiently at the tree, near enough in tears as she panted between breaths, "It... means... I haven't... spent a ... Christmas away...from Mystic Falls... _ever_. The real Mystic Falls that is. More... importantly... I... have...never...spent a Christmas... away from... my... friends."

"And?"

Bonnie stopped her efforts in dragging the huge Christmas tree into the house and scowled.

"I need it to be Christmas here," she emphasised. "I need the damn illusion I am with my friends even if I'm not. I need to believe I'm back home and not in some goddamn alternate dimension with _you_ of all people, hence why this," she pointed to the tree, "needs to be in your house."

"What happened to you being all hopeful that we would bust out of here?" Damon couldn't help but question, raising one snarky eyebrow.

Bonnie made a helpless gesture.

"Hope is like fire, Damon. Every so often, it needs kindling, or it goes out."

With a heavy sigh, Damon assisted her in dragging the tree inside, helping her position it in the lounge, even though it was a ghastly looking thing, and it clashed horrifically with the rest of the decor. He'd not celebrated Christmas since he was a child, not properly anyway, although he and Elena had certainly had come close to celebrating it together.

Pushing back these dangerous thoughts before they added enough lines to his face that people might've mistook him for Stefan, Damon watched as Bonnie spread the branches out in a way that made the tree almost engulf the room. He vaguely wondered why she hadn't used the scraps of magic she had left to help her with the task, but she was concentrating hard on creating this illusion, and he thought if he dared ask he might've had his head mounted over the fireplace.

The thing was, Elena had been big on Christmas too. Maybe it was a girl thing. But her eyes had always lit up when the day had rolled around, a great big smile plastered on her face as she'd rolled out presents. It was the one time where she could forget all the terrible things which had happened to her and to her loved ones, and maybe it was all a big show, but it was still a hell of a show to watch. Even when she'd been with Stefan, there had been something magical about her at Christmas. She'd sung out of tune to overplayed Christmas songs, and somehow they'd sounded like birdsong to his ears. She'd burn cookies and ice on very odd shapes that he could only just make out to be Christmassy themed items, yet somehow they tasted like pure sugar as he'd devoured every crumb. She would get drunk so easily and on so little, and would say the silliest things, but somehow she'd made perfect sense to him.

He frowned, wondering when his brain had decided to waive the Elena injunction he'd imposed on his own mind in favour of remembering moments that hadn't really belonged to him- to them. It was perhaps less painful than remembering the times which did belong to them, like the kiss in the rain under a plethora of comets, or the week they'd spend on the road, breaking in beds in abandoned little houses – _motels are so overrated, _he'd once declared – or the time when they'd once had an argument so big, it had near enough destroyed them, only for the whole thing to spin around on its axis as they'd screamed their love for each other at the same moment the hatred spewed from their eyes. Love, hate... it was a fine line they'd always walked, and what a walk they'd taken. He would've loved to have taken a tour of the landmarks where they'd shared pivotal moments, or gazed at photographs of frozen moments where they'd been completely in the moment and nowhere else.

"You know, Damon, I've always thought you had an excellent poker face," Bonnie remarked, cutting the silence with her voice.

He blinked, confused by this change in topic.

"I have an excellent face full stop," he bragged, covering his moment of weakness with a smirk.

"You didn't let me finish." Bonnie threw him her trademark look of thinly veiled contempt. "I was going to say you've got a good poker face, meaning you hide your emotions well." She then smiled. "But you can never hide the face you make when you're thinking about Elena."

"I'm not thinking about her," he felt he need to say, a little too defensively, which kind of shattered his own line of defence, ironically.

"No? Then I guess you have some other sweetheart waiting for you back home," Bonnie drawled, not buying his lie at all. "You can admit it you know. You miss her."

"Gee, do I need to state the obvious every second of the day?" he snapped.

"No, but you have the same look Caroline does whenever she has some big secret to tell me. The look that says it's physically hurting you to hold back whatever it is you want to say."

"Leave it alone, Bonnie."

Bonnie shook her head. "You're not the only one missing her, Damon. God forbid we actually bond over our love for the same people." She shook her head, evidently done with the conversation for the moment. "Now... where do you keep your decorations, or am I going to have to make yet another trip to the store?"

"We have some in one of the storage rooms at the back of the house upstairs. Knock yourself out." Damon was already reaching for a bottle of Bourbon, aching to rid this of this dreadful pang which was preventing him from making the most of a terrible situation.

Bonnie looked as if she was about to say something else, but then shook her head, evidently deciding it wasn't worth the effort to say another word to him when he was in the mood. It just went to show how much she'd come to know him; she could predict his moods like the weather, and although infuriatingly most of the time she dared to provoke him, even when he was in the middle of one of his rages, she knew how to temper him. She kept him even tempered – well, as even tempered as a volatile, impulsive vampire could be – and kept him hoping, even when he knew deep down in his heart of hearts it was hopeless. Even with the scraps of magic Bonnie had managed to redeem from her own broken soul, they hadn't found the solution into busting their way out of here, and although he'd been saying from day one they were stuck here forever, doomed to never see the light of a day that didn't belong to 1994, he kind of had been hoping all the same.

Hope was the sneakiest of emotions. It could climb into your bloodstream without you even noticing it was there, like a disease infecting you from the inside out, and you never really knew how much it had affected you until the symptoms made themselves apparent.

Truth be told he hadn't realised just how much he'd been banking on them being offered a last minute reprieve until Christmas had dawned – in the real world, anyway, not this fabricated hell he likened to a prison – and no Christmas miracle had presented itself to send them home. He knew he shouldn't have watched those Christmas films with Elena. They'd fed him false delusions of a happy ending he'd known all along he'd never get.

After an hour of solid brooding, something Stefan would've been proud of, he heard Bonnie return.

"Took you a long time to navigate your way out of there huh?" he snorted. "Yeah, Stefan saved a lot of crap over the years. Such a pack rat, my baby brother."

"I'd believe that a lot more if I hadn't seen that a good half of the items in that room clearly belonged to you," Bonnie retorted. "Explain that one, Sherlock. You can't seriously tell me that Stefan is the proud owner of a series of leather jackets from what looks like every significant decade!"

"What can I say? Some things I liked to keep hold of. The Boarding House became a storage space at one point. It was easier to just keep it all there. Don't go making a bigger deal out of it than it actually is."

"Yeah, but why keep them at all?" Bonnie wore a triumphant expression. "Even in your darkest days, Damon, you still had a glimmer of humanity in you. Dress it up in whatever excuse your sharp tongue has at the ready, but I know despite how much of an ass you are, you've never been completely heartless..."

Damon blurred over to her, ready to wrap his hand around her neck because anger just was one of those emotions which came so naturally to him, and it fuelled spontaneous actions like this one which usually led into him doing something stupid that either got people killed, or caused someone he cared about to get angry at him.

"Don't," he warned her, restraining himself. "I _refuse_ to be psychoanalysed by someone who never even made it through her first year at college." A familiar sneer curled his lips because this was what made him through lonely moments like this one; pushing and prodding someone's nerves until they snapped and lashed out. It should've disturbed him how at home with hostility he truly was, but it had just become one of those things he'd grown accustomed to without questioning the healthiness of it.

Bonnie flinched, and he knew he'd struck gold.

She shook her head, as if unable to believe her last comment had filtered through her lips, and then she moved silently past him, grabbing decorations to start the long and tedious decorating process.

He watched her the whole time, with nothing better to do, although the silence really was excruciating. Armed with only a bottle of bourbon to drink, he watched as Bonnie wrapped some dusty, clearly neglected lights around the tree, her eyes lighting up with determination. She was at it for two hours, during which he restrained himself from making any kind of snarky remark because, frankly, his heart wasn't in it. He couldn't really throw himself into this illusion of happiness because that's all it was...an illusion. Without Elena and his brother here, he felt hollow, vacant. Making the house vaguely Christmassy was a noble effort in trying to pass off the idea that time had actually passed here, but in reality it just reminded him that it hadn't. It would always be the same damn day every day, and maybe it wasn't his own personal hell, but it was hell all the same.

"Elena told me she and Jeremy attempted to decorate their house once, only they made it look like a disaster," he recalled, not even talking directly to Bonnie; it was just his mouth rambling the random pieces of memory his brain had retained.

"I know. I was the one she told the night before she went ahead and did it." Bonnie's reply was short, but Damon still heard the pain in her voice from just recounting that memory. "Elena is many things, but an interior designer she is not, which is why we leave all the planning and committee-type things to Caroline."

Damon made a non-committal noise.

As Bonnie, despite her disgruntled manner, began to recount tales of other Christmases, Damon found himself thinking about the first Christmas he'd spent in Mystic Falls when Elena had been in his life – albeit, at the time she'd been with Stefan. It wasn't a particularly happy memory he recounted, but it was one he could recall with perfect clarity, as if it were only yesterday.

He'd been going somewhere – to do something dastardly, no doubt – and he'd observed Elena and her friends – at the time, annoying, and probably on his list to kill should he ever have the opportunity to do so – walking down the street. Without really being aware why, he took the opportunity to steal away into the shadows, observing them quality, rather like a stalker. They were laden with what appeared to be Christmas gift bags, and it was then he vaguely recalled the day being Christmas or Christmas Eve – one of the two – and it was rather a humbling feeling, to realise that eternity on earth often meant losing track of the days and various celebrations. Anyway, he'd watched Elena and Caroline and Bonnie pause in the street, under a flickering streetlamp, clearly on their way home, and he'd been struck by her laugh, which was prompted by something Caroline had said. She'd lifted back her head, a melodious laugh bursting from her lips, and the whole noise seemed to shake her body. At the time, he'd only been partially aware of how glorious a sound it had been; now, years down the line, it held a new significance.

It was the first moment he'd heard her truly laugh, and it had happened without any supernatural beings present, which made him wonder if she had this side to her that she just showed around her friends. If so, he wondered what else he didn't know about her. Of course, that moment had been just a split second, a mere blink of pure humanity, and then he'd gone back to boozing and schmoozing with the women of Mystic Falls.

Sometimes Damon wondered what it would've been like to have been that guy again, the one who didn't care about anyone but himself because it was easier to be that way. He was sure that guy wouldn't be sitting here feeling decidedly sorry for himself.

After an internal debate which saw her face scrunching up with confusion, Bonnie elected not to go to the bother of cooking Christmas dinner. Apparently, there was only so much you could add to an illusion before it had the opposite effect and just felt hollow. She recalled nostalgically how her dad had always attempted to make dinner, but they'd always had take out instead, so she'd always snuck over to Elena's, where Miranda had always had spares.

Instead, they had dinner and exchanged very little conversation. Nothing new there. Halfway through, however, Damon saw Bonnie was concentrating very hard, her gaze solely focused on one of the baubles hanging across the tree.

"If you stare any harder at that thing, you'll burst into flames," he remarked, snidely adding, "Not that that wouldn't brighten up _my _Christmas, but..."

Bonnie ignored him.

She closed her eyes and chanted something under her breath. Occasionally, little wisps of magic would come back to her, and it would feel absolutely unreal to have even that little power again. There was never enough to send them back home, and they wouldn't have even begun to guess how to attempt that feat anyway, but it was certainly enough to give them a grain of hope to chew on between them.

Damon had given up trying to give up, as Bonnie consistently nagged him into doing otherwise until he'd felt like strangling her, but he would never be fully convinced they were actually capable of being saved. There was no miracle in this dimension, nothing good to be reaped, which is why he found himself looking up when Bonnie's breathing hitched, and his own eyes began to widen.

He had to have been dreaming. There was no way otherwise to explain how he could be seeing Elena's face in a bauble of all things. Even if it was a delicious daydream, he still savoured every moment. It was the closest thing to a picture he had, besides her house, and he savoured every inch of the delusion he surely was under right now. She was in her dorm room, he could recognise that much of her surroundings, and the decorations were loosely strewn about in the background. She wore an expression bordering almost on indifference, although he'd known her long enough to recognise the look she had when she was holding back a world of pain.

She was wearing a long sleeved purple jumper style dress, which hugged her figure and accentuated certain parts of her body _beautifully. _In fact, he distinctly recalled near enough tearing off that jumper in a moment of passion just to get access to the beautiful body it hid from view, and he wondered if the same memory crossed her mind now.

"Is this real?" he asked, fearing the answer and wanting it all the same.

"In lieu of a present, this was all I could think to do," Bonnie replied. "So, yes, it's real. I can't hold it for long, and chances are we can't actually communicate via this thing, but it's better than nothing."

Damon had stopped listening the moment she'd confirmed this was real. It was a bauble version of a live webcam, and though no sound came through it, the visual was even better than he could've hoped for.

Halfway through, Elena actually seemed to look directly at them, and without even planning it, Damon's lips curled into a smile, as if she could see it. He was really was a lovesick fool. The real nineties Damon would've been ashamed... and perhaps a little envious. She locked eyes with him, and it felt like the world had stopped spinning. It was just like in those early days, when he'd began to fear he was falling for Elena because she was crowding his mind during every waking moment, and because every time he saw her, he stopped in his path, just to take in her visage. He felt that familiar, almost sickening feeling of tripping over your own heart because it seemed to be what was leading you.

She was mouthing something, words he couldn't hear but somehow read.

_Merry Christmas. _

It didn't feel very merry, or very Christmassy despite the illusion of it in his home. Frankly, he'd had better Christmases when he'd had his emotions turned off, just because he'd never felt this lost before. He felt close to Elena yet unbelievably far away, because she was simultaneously there and not there; a ghost of a presence. He both loved and hated this unexpected gift Bonnie had presented them with.

In the end, Bonnie couldn't hold the spell, and they were back to staring at the gold bauble in shared misery. His eyes traced the place where Elena's face had been just moments before and then his shoulders sagged, as he reluctantly accepted the fact that that was all he was going to get in the way of a present: a fleeting glimpse of his girl who he couldn't speak to, and who he had no guarantee had been able to see him.

"She was there," he said, his voice unbelievably flat, despite the fact he was almost shaking with emotion. "She was actually there."

"Not having a good Christmas by the looks of things," Bonnie added faintly, sounding like she couldn't quite restrain her own emotions either. "Then again, neither are we."

Damon merely nodded, closing his eyes so he could soak up the memory of seeing Elena again. Why she was alone, and why she was spending the day at Whitmore, he hated not knowing. He was no fan of Christmas, although he had been once upon a time, but it wasn't to say he hadn't a few nice ones since his childhood. He and Stefan had shared moments on the day when they'd passed into each other's life again, however fleetingly. Sometimes they'd sent the odd message, although they'd never replied, too hung up with their grievances with the other to do so.

Still, nothing hurt like being alone on Christmas.

For all his grievances with where he was, at least he had Bonnie. She wasn't exactly his favourite person, but he had grown surprisingly fond of her – more so, now that she'd given him the greatest gift in the world: a sneak peek of his girl back home. Elena being in her dorm room, looking neither happy nor sad, surprisingly hurt. He ached to be there, just to hold her, just to reciprocate the declaration of love she'd tried to pass to him before the Camaro had collided spectacularly with the Mystic Grill. It was on his list of regrets that he'd never let those words pass through his lips, all for the stupid reason that he thought he'd be around later to say them.

"We need to get back home, Bonnie," he said quietly, as if that wasn't the whole point of them sticking together, as if that wasn't the mutual goal they both shared, as if he wasn't stating the _bloody _obvious.

"Gee, you think?" she snapped.

He restrained himself from rolling his eyes.

"If there's even the slightest chance we can get home, we have to take it."

Bonnie nodded. "Where we do even begin though?"

He furrowed his brow, trying to think.

"I don't know," he eventually replied. "But if there's an answer here somewhere, we'll find it."

"There's always hope," Bonnie reminded him, and he couldn't help but smile, remembering that was something Elena was always big on – hope.

It didn't matter how dire the situation, or how hopeless the odds were, she was always determined that there was another way to solve things. If the obvious solution came at a huge cost to someone, she always resolved to find a different way, because she couldn't lose anyone she loved, and that determination and passion was what had drawn him to her, and it was why she was the love of his life, and it was the exact traits he planned to adopt so he could make his way home to her.

"There's always hope," he echoed, still staring at the bauble where her face had been moments before.

And he reluctantly smiled.

_I will find my way back to you, Elena, _he thought. _I love you. I promise the moment I come home, I will never stop telling you that. _

And for the rest of their makeshift Christmas, he replayed the best moments of his life, noticing Elena starred in every single one of them, and that realisation made his smile grow a little bit wider.

It was true that absence did make the heart grow fonder, but it also made you more thankful, to recount all the ways that special someone had made a difference to your life, to recall all the ways they'd changed you for the better, and for Damon, he could no longer count all the ways he'd changed for Elena, or even begin to devise a list of all the memories he had her to thank for, but he knew one thing with utter certainity.

Even in death, he loved her harder than he'd ever done in life, and he didn't ever see that feeling subsiding, no matter how much time or distance there lay between them.

* * *

><p>An: Okay, so this strictly didn't feature much Delena action. This was more of a way of easing my way back into the world of fanfiction so excuse the fact my writing may be a little shoddy here, and my characterisations may be a tad off. I do aim to write a couple more one-shots before I feel comfortable returning to my ongoing fics so if any fans of my other stories are concerned about me updating, I do plan to return to them. I've just had a busy few months but I'm aiming to get back into writing! Hope you liked this little Christmas one-shot despite the fact it's past Christmas and well into the new year lol :)


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